anything else
by Laura013
Summary: post-Empty Hearse, Molly Hooper's thoughts. Hinted Sherlolly. Rated T to be safe. one-shot COMPLETE


**anything else**

* * *

_ "Because, if you could love someone, and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . then that love had to be real. It hurt too much to be anything else."_

_-Sarah Cross, Kill Me Softly _

* * *

Of course she knew. After all, she had spent the last two bloody months with him. Despite his rather introverted exterior, all Sherlock Holmes did was talk. So, in fact, it did not take long for Molly Hooper to learn every last detail of the events of the "roof incident," as Sherlock had grown accustomed to referring to it. And for some, horrid, sick reason, Molly hadn't found herself surprised when he had mentioned Moriarty's plan to kill the people that mattered. And, to her great dismay, she hadn't been the slightest bit surprised to learn that she was not one of those people. John. Mrs. Hudson. Even bloody _Lestrade_ was on the list, but not Molly Hooper? Hadn't she done what was to be deserved? Hadn't she stood beside him? Cared for him? Hadn't she given her heart to the bloody fool? _Loved_ him with every last inch of her body? And she didn't even get his damn _attention_?

People gawked and gaped at the mystery that was Sherlock Holmes. They always had, even before he died, stared after him as he walked down the street, babbling inconsistencies about things that possibly only Mycroft would catch on with.

Mycroft.

When Sherlock had needed someone more than anything, when he had needed a _family_ to go to, what did his only _real_ family say? Mycroft, his only blood relative, had turned him down. Said he was _too busy_, didn't want to _get involved_. So he turned to the only one who "mattered." He had told Molly that she was important. He had lied. It was a quite good lie, she had thought at the time. Almost convincing. Almost. But he could never really convince Molly Hooper.

He never convinced her that she was worth it.

Because she.

Didn't.

Count.

And after two months of sitting with this, she couldn't take it anymore.

"Get out of my morgue," she had whispered it under her breath. Because, while people did their gawking and gaping, trying to find out his mystery, those who believed trying to find _him_, they hadn't looked in the most obvious place in the world. The morgue. What's a more fitting place for a dead man to take his final rest than a morgue?

But Molly Hooper had had enough of the scandal. The lies. The hiding. And so she kicked him out. And then, not a year later, she had met _Tom._ Her now fiancée. When he had proposed, that summer eve, she had asked for ten minutes to think about it, because really, she didn't want to promise her soul away when her heart was still astray. She couldn't have a man tie himself to a sinking ship, a ship promised to another, even if the other rejected her coldly. They say the average human falls in love seven times before they get married, but Molly Hooper's heart had only gone to one.

And then Sherlock Holmes emerged.

He emerged from the dead.

He told John (as well as his fiancée). He told Ms. Hudson. He even told Lestrade. But not Molly. He didn't have to tell Molly.

Then he did the unspeakable. He asked her to solve _crimes_ with him. To solve bloody _crimes_ with him! To be a bloody replacement for the man he abandoned, to be a replacement friend. The words sunk in her mind like an anchor in the ocean.

But how could she say no to Sherlock Holmes?

So she did it. She went crime solving with Sherlock Holmes. Any average woman (even some men) would kill to be in this position. They would commit the crimes he repelled just to spend five seconds in his graces. But not Molly. Oh, no, not Molly. She recognized the true curse of it all. Every time he called her 'John.'

"You're not being John. You're being yourself."

But was she? She did all of the staple _John_ things. Note-taking, medical expertise, general assisting. And yet… something felt special about it to her. Something she wouldn't ever share, not even with Tom. It felt good to be recognized.

But what had really caught Molly off her guard, what had really _surprised_ her, was Sherlock's goodbye. Sure, they would be seeing each other often, but this was his _private_ goodbye to the Molly Hooper he had known. When she had asked him why he chose _her_ to solve crimes with, she had expected a shit answer. But no, rather, he had surprised her, good and old fashioned, with a thank you.

But when he said the final words, that was what had stung her deep.

"Moriarty slipped up, he made a mistake," he had whispered.

She had stood there, staring in all of her youthful wonder and hope, remembering all of those forgotten prayers to every deity that her naïve brain could think of, praying for Sherlock Holmes.

The words of their momentarily forgotten pasts lingering like ghosts between them as he spoke his next breathtaking, _unforgettable_ words.

"The person," he said, with great upheaval, "he thought didn't matter to me," his voice lowered to a whisper as Molly's heart rate soared, "was the one person that mattered the most."

Every breath of every tense hope Molly had held slipped out in one breath of silent relief. She knew he would never love her the way she loved him, and so did he. She knew they would never end up together like in one of her fantasies. She would probably marry Tom, and they would carry on. And that was okay now.

But then he did something else. He bent down and kissed her cheek. His lips felt cold against her skin as she sighed inwardly. Although it was the friendliest of remarks, Molly Hooper felt something more as sure as daylight, and for a moment, she wondered if he had felt something too.


End file.
